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Press Releases

Jun252014

Rubio: “The fundamental challenge that we face is that every single one of our institutions in this country – from government to higher education and everything in between – has completely failed to adjust to 21st century reality. None of them are responsive to the new world that we now live in, where globalization and information technology have changed the nature of our economy. And our laws and our education system simply don’t reflect this.”

CNBC’s Joe Kernen: “We’re going to fix it right now – the future of the American Dream – how can we do it?”

Senator Marco Rubio: “Well, first of all, let’s understand what the problem is. I go back to my own upbringing, where my parents were not highly educated, didn’t have much of a formal education, came here as immigrants and were able to make it to the American middle class working service jobs. And the more important part of my childhood is that I grew up believing that I could go as far as my talent and my work will take me. That I could have the same dreams and the same future as the son of a president, as the son of a millionaire.

“Now you have a growing number of Americans that don’t think that’s true anymore. And today, I will highlight the story of four separate groups of Americans. We have a young, single mother in Florida who is struggling to provide for her two daughters. She is stuck in a job that doesn’t pay a lot of money. The only way she’s ever going to be able to improve her prospects are to go back to school. But she can’t because we have a higher education cartel that does not allow innovation to enter the educational space and provide her cost-effective and time-effective ways to get that education.

“We’ll meet two young Americans living in Florida who did go to college and graduated, and neither one of them can find a job in the field they graduated from. But one of them was about to start making payments on a student loan. And the other needs to go back to grad school, but is afraid to because she doesn’t want to owe $50,000 or $60,000 when she finishes.

“And the last is a family that runs a small business. They got hit hard by the recession. They were starting to climb out of it. Then they got hit by ObamaCare, and then they’ve gotten hit by just the general malaise in the economic growth. They don’t know how they’re going to save for retirement.

“For all these people, their dreams are not exotic. None of them are looking to be billionaires, or anything like that. They just want to be able to own a home, raise a family in a safe environment, have children with the opportunity to have a life better than themselves. And we need to reclaim that.

“The fundamental challenge that we face is that every single one of our institutions in this country – from government to higher education and everything in between – has completely failed to adjust to 21st century reality. None of them are responsive to the new world that we now live in, where globalization and information technology have changed the nature of our economy. And our laws and our education system simply don’t reflect this.”